ShaniaTwo Sides of the Same Coin — But Speaking Different Languages
Cloud costs are climbing, but Finance and IT rarely agree on why. One side sees a budget overrun. The other sees a necessary investment. Finance wants predictability. IT needs flexibility. One team says, “Why are we over budget?” The other says, “We prevented an outage last weekend.” Same event — two completely different interpretations.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many teams discover too late that they’re looking at the same invoice — but asking different questions. This misalignment creates more than friction. It causes delays, mistrust, and wasted spend.
At Wowrack, we’ve worked with businesses across industries that struggle with this exact tension. The good news? Alignment is possible — and it starts with visibility, shared ownership, and clear goals.
1. The Core Disconnect: Cost vs. Value Mindset
If you’re in Finance, you probably look at rising cloud bills and ask, “Why is this increasing?”
If you’re in IT, you might look at that same bill and think, “That’s the cost of keeping everything running smoothly.”
Both perspectives are valid, but if you don’t share the same view of success, you’ll keep missing each other’s point. IT tends to focus on uptime, performance, and scalability. Finance focuses on budgets, forecasts, and ROI. When you’re not working from the same set of goals or metrics, conversations feel like a tug-of-war instead of collaboration.
That’s why the first step to alignment is simple: define what success looks like together. That could mean tracking cost per user, uptime within a budget, or other joint goals that reflect both value and control.
2. The Cloud Billing Problem: It’s Not Built for You
Cloud invoices aren’t exactly made for CFOs. Instead of clear business context, you get technical terms, usage-based pricing, and surprise egress fees.
If you’re in Finance, you might feel like you’re reading a different language. If you’re in IT, your dashboards might show usage data, but not explain why a specific workload is burning through your budget.
Without a shared understanding of what’s driving costs, it’s easy to slip into blame. You need tools and a shared process that translate tech usage into business impact. This post on the hidden costs of ignoring your cloud bill breaks down why those disconnects happen and how to stay ahead of them.
3. Why Overprovisioning Happens — and Keeps Happening
Here’s the truth: overprovisioning isn’t careless. It’s cautious.
IT teams often add extra capacity “just in case” to avoid downtime, prevent bottlenecks, and stay ready for unexpected spikes. And who can blame them? But if you’re in finance, those unused resources look like waste. If there’s no clear ownership or usage tracking, it’s hard to fix the issue.
A report by Futurum Research found that 97% of respondents overprovision storage by 10% or more, and 85% do the same for compute, with overprovisioning ranging from 10% to 50%.
Most companies don’t do this because they’re careless. They do it because there’s a lack of visibility. Better tagging, clearer ownership, and regular check-ins can help you stay prepared without overspending.
4. Aligning with FinOps — Without Slowing You Down
FinOps isn’t about locking things down or giving Finance full control of your cloud. It’s about creating shared responsibility where IT, Finance, and even Product teams understand how their choices affect corporate spending.
When FinOps works well, it doesn’t slow anyone down. It actually gives teams more confidence to make decisions because they know the cost impact ahead of time.
Here’s what healthy FinOps habits can look like:
- Spending tied to ownership: Tagging resources by department or project lets you see where the money’s going and who’s responsible for it.
- Budget visibility, not surprises: Real-time alerts give you a heads-up early, so small issues don’t turn into big overruns later.
- Shared dashboards: Instead of IT and Finance looking at different reports, everyone sees the same metrics: cost per user, usage spikes, idle resources.
At Wowrack, we help you put FinOps into practice in a way that’s simple, flexible, and grounded in real business goals. No complexity. No finger-pointing. Just better decisions, made together.
5. A Shared Playbook for Optimization
You don’t need a full overhaul to start seeing results. Sometimes the best step is just getting everyone on the same page and doing it regularly.
Try this: set a monthly or quarterly check-in where IT, Finance, and other teams review cloud usage and spending together. You can start small, even just agreeing to tag every new resource consistently can go a long way.
The key is to keep it consistent.
Here’s how to put that into practice:
- Define shared success metrics
- Tag every new resource by team or function
- Hold monthly cross-functional FinOps check-ins
- Use shared dashboards for usage + cost
- Build forecasting into your regular cadence
Once your data is out in the open and your teams are working toward the same goals, cloud conversations become less reactive and a lot more strategic. For more tips, check out these 7 proven strategies to stop cloud cost overruns before they start — all actionable, and all designed to help you take control without slowing innovation.
From Tug-of-War to Team Sport
Cloud shouldn’t be the thing that divides you. With the right visibility, shared language, and support, it can actually bring your teams closer and drive better decisions together.
Bridge the Gap Between Finance and IT — And Cut Waste Without Cutting Performance
Cut cloud waste without compromising performance. Book a consultation with our cloud experts to align your Finance and IT teams and gain full visibility into cloud spend.
